BASH or other .HEX to .BIN Converter for Altair 8800 computers ???

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Where can I find BASH?  Google is sending me to all sorts of nonsense, but not the Altair program, or a Windows 11 compatible program.  

Are there any other converters between .BIN and .HEX?  

.

[Patrick Linstruth]

What is BASH? Typically it is referring to a Unix shell.

Google might be confused because “altair program” is nonsensical.

If you tell it CP/M-80, you might have more luck.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 14, 2026, at 6:34 PM, Walt Perko <r4r...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, 

Where can I find BASH?  Google is sending me to all sorts of nonsense, but not the Altair program, or a Windows 11 compatible program.  

Are there any other converters between .BIN and .HEX?  

.

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[Joseph Corda]

Walt 
BASH is a unix/Linux shell ..  kind of like MS-DOS command prompt.. I know there are versions of BASH for Windows (gitbash for example) .. but can not recommend one.   As for converting a binary/rom image to hex I have had some success using a linux tool called "objcopy" I know this does not help WIndows users but felt it was worth mentioning.. Here is an example of running it 

objcopy -I binary -O ihex input.bin output.hex

Aso I you have any interest I wrote a tool in 8080 assembler when I created in my Joemon monitor that takes an address range and converts it to intel hex and dumps it to the screen.   I would then copy and paste the screen HEX dump into a file. (I later added the same function to my monitor.) 

If this sounds helpful ..I will look to see if I can find my code...   I mainly ran it on SIMH Altair  simulator
Please note as I recall this was written to help me learn 8080 Assembler language so it is very rough .. and not a good coding example.

Joe

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[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I'm trying to go the other way.  I want to convert an Intel .HEX file into a RAW .BIN file.  

.

[Joseph Corda]

Hmm ..

Well this might get your part of way

Have you tried  to write a mbasic program that uses the "peek" command to dump the bytes from a range of memory to a file

I have not tried this but it I recall mbasic had both peek and poke in certain versions 

Joe

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Altair-8800/720fdaf4-7e25-4b04-bc7f-0daeb03a58b8n%40googlegroups.com.

[Joseph Corda]

Walt

Here is a simple mbasic program that can set a value in memory and read it back. 

Add an input for a mem range .. a loop and send the output to a file and you are done ;-)

All kidding aside this should get you started with dumping memory from a mbasic program 

Once you get it working . then convert it to ASM to get some speed .. 

Joe

list
10 POKE &HFF,&HAA
20 A=PEEK(&HFF)
30 PRINT A
40 B$=HEX$(A)
50 PRINT B$
Ok
run
 170
AA
Ok

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I should say, I want to program a 27C64 EPROM with AMON ... I got the AMON.HEX from https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/010-S100%20Computers%20and%20Boards/03-Martin%20Eberhard/40-Eberhard%20Firmware/AMON/

My XGPro II Plus loads Intel .HEX files, but when I try loading the AMON into the EPROM Programmer software, all I see is FF throughout the entire 8K chip!  

I should be able to load the file, move it to the correct offset and burn the image into the EPROM, but all I see is FF everywhere!  

.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I've written PEEK 'n POKE programs with MBASIC/BASIC-80 ... but that's not going to create a .BIN file on my PC. that I can program an EPROM with.  

https://youtu.be/RFQh9OWWuEc

.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Geeze I love A.I. ... ChatGPT did the conversion for me in 2-seconds ... 

I got the AMON.HEX loaded into the XGPro TL866 II Plus buffer, at the correct offset and saved the file.  

I still think there must be a certified good PC/Windows program that can swap back 'n forth between .HEX and .BIN, but so far Google is more of a distraction than a useful search anymore.  

.

[Patrick Linstruth]

Walt, your AMON is probably assembled to start at F800. Your ROM starts at 0000.

When loading the HEX file, you will need to give your software an offset to have it load in the correct location of your ROM.

To do this you need to know where your ROM starts in your 64K address space and the offset from that location to where AMON will be.

Example. If your ROM starts at F000 and AMON is at F800, you will need a -F000 offset when loading the HEX file, which will load your HEX file at 0800 within the ROM.

Sent from my iPhone

On May 14, 2026, at 9:11 PM, Walt Perko <r4r...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, 

I should say, I want to program a 27C64 EPROM with AMON ... I got the AMON.HEX from https://deramp.com/downloads/mfe_archive/010-S100%20Computers%20and%20Boards/03-Martin%20Eberhard/40-Eberhard%20Firmware/AMON/

My XGPro II Plus loads Intel .HEX files, but when I try loading the AMON into the EPROM Programmer software, all I see is FF throughout the entire 8K chip!  

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Altair-8800/b7c74b7a-e3bd-457b-ba99-6e88caa822c5n%40googlegroups.com.

[Patrick Linstruth]

Give these a try:

https://deramp.com/downloads/misc_software/hex-binary%20utilities%20for%20the%20PC/

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Altair-8800/b50f53a1-2207-4c6b-b479-70e0d981a866n%40googlegroups.com.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Okay, that is probably the problem I was having with the AMON.HEX file.  The  XGPro TL866 II Plus was trying to buffer the file at F800 which is out of range of the chip buffer in the  XGPro TL866 II Plus, so nothing shows up on the display.  

After converting the file to a .BIN, then I just loaded the .BIN into the buffer area starting at 0800h and that worked.  

I'll give the Load -F000h a try when I get up in the morning to play.  I need to go back to sleep now.  

.